The origin and development of the moral ideas

Celibacy is thus disapproved of for various reasons. It appears unnatural. It is taken as an indication of licentious habits. Where ancestors are worshipped after their death it inspires religious horror: the man who leaves himself without offspring shows reckless indifference to the religion of his people, to his own fate after death, and to the duties he owes the dead, whose spirits depend upon the offerings of their descendants for their comfort. The last point of view, as we have seen, is particularly prominent among peoples of archaic culture, but it is not unknown at a lower stage of civilisation. Thus the Eskimo about Behring Strait “appear to have great dread of dying without being assured that their shades will be remembered during the festivals, fearing if neglected that they would thereby suffer destitution in the future life”; hence a pair of childless Eskimo frequently adopt a child, so that when they die there will be some one left whose duty it will be to make the customary feast and offerings to their shades at the festival of the dead.37 Finally, in communities with a keen public spirit, especially in ambitious states frequently engaged in war, celibacy is regarded as a wrong committed against the State.

Modern civilisation looks upon celibacy in a different light. The religious motive for marriage has ceased to exist, the lot of the dead being no longer supposed to depend upon the devotion of the living. It is said, in a general way, that marriage is a duty to the nation or the race, but this argument is hardly applied to individual cases. According to modern ideas the union between man and woman is too much a matter of sentiment to be properly classified among civic duties. Nor does the unmarried state strike us as particularly unnatural. The proportion of unmarried people is gradually growing larger and the age at which people marry is rising.38 The chief causes of this increasing celibacy are the difficulty of supporting a family under present conditions of life, and the luxurious habits of living in the upper classes of society. Another reason is that the domestic circle does not fill so large a place in life as it did formerly; the married state has in some measure lost its advantage over the single state, and there are many more pleasures now that can be enjoyed as well or even better in celibacy. Moreover, by the diffusion of a finer culture throughout the community, men and women can less easily find any one whom they are willing to take as a partner for life; their requirements are more exacting, they have a livelier sense of the serious character of the marriage union, and they are less willing to contract it from any lower motives.39

Nay, far from enjoining marriage as a duty incumbent upon all, enlightened opinion seems to agree that it is a duty for many people never to marry. In some European countries the marriages of persons in receipt of poor-law relief have been legally prohibited, and in certain cases the legislators have gone further still and prohibited all marriages until the contracting parties can prove that they possess the means of supporting a family.40 The opinion has also been expressed that the State ought to forbid the unions of persons suffering from certain kinds of disease, which in all probability would be transmitted to the offspring. People are beginning to feel that it entails a heavy responsibility to bring a new being into existence, and that many persons are wholly unfit for such a task.41 Future generations will probably with a kind of horror look back at a period when the most important, and in its consequences the most far-reaching, function which has fallen to the lot of man was entirely left to individual caprice and lust.

Side by side with the opinion that marriage is a duty for all ordinary men and women we find among many peoples the notion that persons whose function it is to perform religious or magical rites must be celibates.42 The Thlinkets believe that if a shaman does not observe continuous chastity his own guardian spirits will kill him.43 In Patagonia the male wizards were not allowed to marry.44 In some tribes of the Guaranies of Paraguay “the female Payes were bound to chastity, or they no longer obtained credit.”45 Celibacy was compulsory on the priests of the Chibchas in Bogota.46 The Tohil priests in Guatemala were vowed to perpetual continence.47 In Ichcatlan the high-priest was obliged to live constantly within the temple, and to abstain from commerce with any woman whatsoever; and if he failed in this duty he was cut in pieces, and the bloody limbs were given as a warning to his successor.48 Of the women who held positions in the temples of ancient Mexico we are told that their chastity was most zealously guarded; during the performance of their duties they were required to keep at a proper distance from the male assistants, at whom they did not even dare to glance.

The punishment to be inflicted upon those who violated their vow of chastity was death; whilst, if their trespass remained entirely secret, they endeavoured to appease the anger of the gods by fasting and austerity of life, dreading that in punishment of their crime their flesh would rot.49 In Yucatan there was, connected with the worship of the sun, an order of vestals the members of which generally enrolled themselves for a certain time, but were afterwards allowed to leave and enter the married state. Some of them, however, remained for ever in the service of the temple and were apotheosised. Their duty was to attend to the sacred fire, and to keep strictly chaste, those who broke their vows being shot to death with arrows.50 In Peru there were likewise virgins dedicated to the sun, who lived in perpetual seclusion to the end of their lives, who preserved their virginity and were forbidden to converse or have sexual intercourse with or to see any man, or even any woman who was not one of themselves.51 And besides the virgins who thus professed perpetual virginity in the monasteries, there were other women, of the blood royal, who led the same life in their own houses, having taken a vow of continence. These women “were held in great veneration for their chastity and purity, and, as a mark of worship and respect, they were called Ocllo, which was a name held sacred in their idolatry”; but if they lost their virtue, they were burnt alive or cast into “the lake of lions.”52

Among the Guanches of the Canary Islands there were virgins, called Magades or Harimagades, who presided over the cult under the direction of the high-priest, and there were other virgins, highly respected, whose function was to pour water over the heads of newborn children, and who could abandon their office and marry whenever they pleased.53 The priestesses of the Tshi- and Ew̔e-speaking peoples on the West Coast of Africa are forbidden to marry.54 In a wood near Cape Padron, in Lower Guinea, lives a priestly king who is allowed neither to leave his house nor to touch a woman.55

In ancient Persia there were sun priestesses who were obliged to refrain from intercourse with men.56 The nine priestesses of the oracle of a Gallic deity in Sena were devoted to perpetual virginity.57 The Romans had their Vestal virgins, whose office, according to tradition, was instituted by Numa. They were compelled to continue unmarried during thirty years, which time they employed in offering sacrifices and performing other rites ordained by the law; and if they suffered themselves to be debauched they were delivered up to the most miserable death, being placed in a subterraneous cell, in their funeral attire, without any sepulchral column, funeral rites, or other customary solemnities.58 After the expiration of the term of thirty years they might marry on quitting the ensigns of their priesthood; but we are told that very few did this, as those who did suffered calamities which were regarded as ominous by the rest, and induced them to remain virgins in the temple of the goddess till their death.59 In Greece priestesses were not infrequently required to be virgins, if not for their whole life, at any rate for the duration of their priesthood.60 Tertullian writes:—“To the Achaean Juno, at the town Aegium, a virgin is allotted; and the priestesses who rave at Delphi know not marriage. We know that widows minister to the African Ceres; they not only withdraw from their still living husbands, but they even introduce other wives to them in their own room, all contact with males, even as far as the kiss of their sons, being forbidden them….

Among the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills the “dairy man” or priest is bound to a celibate existence;65 and among the Hindus, in spite of the great honour in which marriage is held, celibacy has always commanded respect in instances of extraordinary sanctity.66 Those of the Sannyāsis who are known to lead their lives in perfect celibacy receive on that account marks of distinguished honour and respect.67 Already the time-honoured Indian institution of the four Āśramas contained the germ of monastic celibacy, the Brahmacārin, or student, being obliged to observe absolute chastity during the whole course of his study.68 The idea was further developed in Jainism and Buddhism. The Jain monk was to renounce all sexual pleasures, “either with gods, or men, or animals”; not to give way to sensuality; not to discuss topics relating to women; not to contemplate the forms of women.69 Buddhism regards sensuality as altogether incompatible with wisdom and holiness; it is said that “a wise man should avoid married life as if it were a burning pit of live coals.”70 According to the legend, Buddha’s mother, who was the best and purest of the daughters of men, had no other sons, and her conception was due to supernatural causes.71 One of the fundamental duties of monastic life, by an infringement of which the guilty person brings about his inevitable expulsion from Buddha’s order, is that “an ordained monk may not have sexual intercourse, not even with an animal.”72 In Tibet some sects of the Lamas are allowed to marry, but those who do not are considered more holy; and in every sect the